


Virtue #7 -- Faith

by NyteFlyer



Series: Virtues [7]
Category: Donald Strachey Mysteries (Movies)
Genre: Canon Gay Relationship, Drama, First Time, Gay Romance, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Series Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-21
Updated: 2010-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-13 07:40:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/134750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NyteFlyer/pseuds/NyteFlyer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Donald Strachey becomes a man of faith....</p>
            </blockquote>





	Virtue #7 -- Faith

  
_And remember when I moved in you  
The holy dove was moving, too  
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah…._   


  
_~~ "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen_   


Anyone who knows anything at all about Timothy Callahan knows that first and foremost, he’s a man of faith. Faith in his God, faith in the law and the political machine he‘s part of, faith that somewhere down deep inside, even the most flawed of human beings are basically kind and honest and decent and good. Most of all, he has faith in me, faith in my love for him, faith that I’ll never intentionally hurt him, that I’ll never stray. I’d never had anybody believe in me like that before -- never had anyone believe in me, period, if you wanna know the truth -- and it’s been a pretty humbling experience, let me tell you. It’s a lot to live up to, this image of me, self-described asshole and fuck-up, as an altruistic lover. But you know what? For Timmy, I’m more than willing to give it my best shot.

I wish I could be more like him in about a thousand different ways, but most of all, I wish I’d had his capacity for faith, his ability to just believe in something and run with it, you know? But I gotta tell you straight up, I’ve got a suspicious nature, especially when it comes to human relationships. Can’t help it, I just don’t trust people. I don’t thrust their motives, I don’t trust their ability to live up to their promises -- even their promises to themselves. And I sure as hell don’t trust their attention span.

I used to think the concept of "forever" was a myth. It was a pretty picture all wrapped up in wishes, but that was about it. People changed, passions faded, and sooner or later, the poor sap who was still clinging to the delusion of "happily ever after" found himself with nothing to hold onto but empty air. I’d been that poor sap before, and it damned near killed me. I’d sworn I’d never put myself in that position again.

Obviously, I’d lied.

They say you can’t change another person, that they have to change themselves, but I’m living, breathing proof that that’s a load of bullshit. If I’d never met Timmy, I’d still be living in that cruddy studio apartment, eating most of my meals cold out of boxes or cans -- or more likely, drinking them straight from a bourbon bottle -- fucking everything that moved and trying my damnedest to piss off everybody I came in contact with, hoping to finally push some cracked-out loser far enough over the edge for him to pull out a knife or a gun and put me out of my misery. But I did meet Timmy, and he changed my life, altered its course, saved it, saved _me_.

Once upon a time, I was stupid enough to believe that Kyle Griffin loved me. In a way, maybe he did, at least as much as he was capable of loving anything outside his career and himself. It’s one thing to be riding that happy, horny, hormone-powered rush of hooking up with your first lover on the sly, being crazy about him to the point of obsession and still green enough to automatically assume he feels the same way about you. But finding yourself in a mature, stable relationship with a sweetheart like Timmy who spends every waking moment taking care of you and doing everything he can to make you happy? Jesus.

I didn’t _think_ I was loved anymore. I _knew_ it.

It changes the way you feel about yourself, knowing that another human being finds you worthy of that kind of devotion. It makes you look at yourself differently, makes you cut yourself some slack for being human and flawed and maybe a little bit fucked up in the head. It makes you start to believe that you’re an okay guy, that maybe, just maybe, you’re someone who deserves to be loved after all.

No doubt about it, asking Timmy to marry me was the smartest move I ever made. Once I got past my meltdown at the wedding, I was able to kick back and enjoy -- I mean   
really fucking enjoy -- what it meant to be married. I got to wallow in the stability of it, the comfort of knowing I was gonna wake up with the same guy drooling on my pillow every morning for the rest of my life, of knowing that when I opened my eyes in the darkness, freaked out by a bad dream, maybe, or just startled by some noise, and reached out into the night, Timmy’d always be right there, reaching back. There’s no power on heaven or earth that could’ve kept him from it.

All that went both ways, of    
course. There’s nothing I wouldn’t have done for Timothy. And I spent our honeymoon trying my level best to prove it.

I gotta admit, I had my doubts about the whole ski trip thing. I’ve never been a big fan of cold weather, and Albany winters had taught me to hate snow with a passion. Still, there’s a big difference between the bleak and sloppy nastiness you see in the city and the clean, clear freshness of a mountaintop in Vermont. If it’d been up to me, I probably would have picked a trip to Jamaica instead, or a couple of weeks in southern Florida, at least, baking on a beach where the only ice crystals in sight were the lime-flavored ones in our frozen margaritas. But Timmy’s mom was paying for the trip, and he’d been so excited over the idea of teaching me -- spastic, uncoordinated me -- to ski, that I kept my mouth shut and went along for the ride. I can’t tell you how glad I am that I did.

The resort Marion picked for us was upscale but rustic, with a central lodge providing hotel-style accommodations, a couple of good restaurants -- one with a piano bar and a decent dance floor -- a weight room and sauna, a common room for socializing, and an indoor pool. Surrounding the lodge were about a dozen individual cabins, each with a huge stone fireplace, satellite TV, and a hot tub out back with a great view of the mountains. Because it was our honeymoon, after all, and we wanted plenty of privacy, we opted for a cabin.

To make up for the lack of flowers at the wedding, I filled the place with roses. Pink ones and white ones, yellow and orange and even the bloody red ones that gave me the creeps but Timmy seemed to like. But most of all, I gave him the Peace roses he said were his favorite, since they were the first flowers I’d ever given him. I wined Timmy and I dined him, fed him breakfast in bed every morning and took him out dancing most nights, even put on my penguin suit for the occasion without him having to twist my arm to get me to do it.

Like the brochure said, the resort was gay-friendly. But it wasn’t gay-exclusive, and for the first couple of nights, we were the only same-sex couple on the dance floor. In the past, I would have been uncomfortable with the situation and probably would have dug my heels in and refused to dance. But I was proud to be with Timmy and didn’t give a rat’s ass who knew it. I danced his feet off, holding him close and even going in for a kiss from time to time, and if anyone shot us a dirty look or made an insulting remark, I never caught on to it. When Timmy was in my arms, everything else pretty much faded to a blur anyway.

Most of the people we met seemed friendly enough,   
and we had a pretty good time socializing with them whenever Timmy conned me into going to happy hour in the common room. We got pretty close to one older couple in particular, a retired banker from Schenectady named Mickey Crosby and his wife, Carol. They’d spent their honeymoon at the resort back in the fifties, and even though neither of them had been on skis in a couple of decades, they still came back every year or two to hang out over the holidays and celebrate their anniversary. They’d only had one child, Michael Junior, who’d died back in eighty-three, and I guess they sort of made Timmy and me their honorary offspring for the duration.

When Carol showed us a picture of their son, I understood why they adopted us the way they did. Michael looked so much like Timmy it brought a lump to my throat. It also made me think of the blood test I’d taken before we left Albany -- the twelfth in as many months -- and wonder if the results were already filed away at the clinic back home, waiting for me to pick them up. Those monthly tests had become a secret obsession with me, and looking back, even I have to admit it wasn’t exactly a healthy one. But I’d promised myself that the twelfth test would be the last of it, and if the result was what I hoped it was, it’d be the best Christmas present I could ever give Timmy. Or myself, for that matter.

I called Mickey "Bing" to make him laugh, because he had a long face and deep voice like the old    
crooner. We shared a dinner table with them more than once and even spent a couple of evenings in their suite, sipping scotch and listening to Mickey’s stories about his glory days as a helicopter pilot in Korea. From time to time, Timmy would send a look my way, and I knew he was hoping I’d share a story or two from my own stint in Kuwait. But the army wasn’t something I talked about back then. Being Timmy, he let it slide.

On the nights we met them for dinner, we each made it a point to ask Carol to dance at least once. One evening when Timmy had snagged Carol for a couple of rounds, Mickey joked that we were turning him into a wallflower. I immediately stood, gave him a bow with plenty of flourish, and offered my hand. Without missing a beat and with complete dignity, Mickey joined me for a spin around the dance floor. Hell, he even had the grace to let me lead. When Timmy spotted us, I was scared he was going to have an aneurysm, he was laughing so hard. But when the song ended, we traded off, and he took a turn with the old boy as    
well.

Back at our cabin, I kept the fire blazing and the wine chilling, and on the rare occasions the TV was on, I stuck with the classic movie channels instead of ESPN. I gave Timmy long, full-body massages with the scented oil I picked up in the gift shop, made love to him in the hot tub or on the bed or in front of the hearth. I just wanted to spoil him, to show him how happy he made me, to make sure this was a trip he’d never forget.

And yeah, I even learned to ski.

At first, I was convinced Timmy was asking the impossible of me. Sure, I’ve always been a pretty physical kind of guy. If it    
involved running, hitting, aiming, or tackling, I could usually hold my own and then some, just as long as I didn’t have to look graceful doing it. Skiing, as it turned out, took a certain amount of grace, a degree of physical coordination I could fake on the dance floor, maybe, but not on a snow-covered slope.

That first day, I spent more time on my back and ass than on my feet, landing time after time in a hopeless tangle of arms and legs, fiberglass boards and ski poles. On what we agreed would be our last run before calling it a night, I wiped out about a hundred times harder than I had all those other times before and sprained my wrist. In my line of work, minor physical injury was more or less an everyday thing, and Timmy’d turned into the world’s best amateur medic, doing a top-notch job of patching me back together whenever I came home tattered and torn from a case gone wrong. He iced down my wrist as soon as we got back to our room, then did such an expert job of wrapping it, it hardly bothered me at all.

The second day started out pretty much the same way as the first, with me spending more time falling than actually skiing. But a couple of hours in, something clicked in my head and I actually    
started to get the hang of it. To my surprise -- and I think to Timmy’s as well -- we found out that once he got me going, I kinda had a knack for hurtling down the hillside at what felt like the speed of sound. I took the caveman’s approach to the sport, throwing myself into it the way I did with football when I was a kid, or into bar fights before I fell in love with someone who disapproved of black eyes and busted knuckles and cleaned up my act accordingly. But if skiing was a sport as far as I was concerned, it was something else altogether for Timothy. For him, it was pure, fucking poetry.

Timmy’s no athlete -- at least not outside the bedroom. Football and basketball are complete mysteries to him, and he’s got no aim to speak of. He couldn‘t hit the broad side of a barn with a baseball, and he honest-to-god yelps and ducks if you send a volleyball his way. And let’s face it, he runs like a girl. But he swims like a freaking dolphin and skates like a dream. And when you put the man on skis….

I can still see him out there, elegant as hell in his top-dollar ski attire, gliding down that mountain quiet as a whisper. There was no wasted motion there, no over-analyzing or second-guessing himself. For Timmy, tackling the slopes was as natural an act as breathing.

It got me hard just watching    
him.

When we were done for the day, it took everything I had to keep my hands off him til we got inside the cabin. Then I was all over him, trying my best to gobble him whole. He put up with it okay, laughing in that pleased, breathless way of his as he held me off just long enough to make sure the door was locked and the curtains were closed before I pounced. We screwed each other’s brains out wherever we landed: on the bed, the couch, or on the braided rug in front of the fireplace, making love every way we could think of -- almost. We both got banged up some during those post-slope sessions, and I ended up with a rug burn on my ass that took almost a week to heal. Not that either of us were complaining.

When I exchanged vows with Timmy, I knew I was marrying the love of my life. But you know what? During those two weeks in Vermont, I found out I’d also married my best friend. My one stipulation when I’d agreed to trade one arctic climate for another was that he had to leave his    
briefcase, cell phone, and laptop back in Albany -- cruel and unusual punishment, I know, since you might as well ask him to amputate a couple of limbs and maybe lop off a ball or two while you’re at it. But I said I’d do the same, with my gun even thrown into the mix, so he finally caved and went along with it. After a brief but bloody withdrawal period, he adjusted nicely. With all those miles between him and his professional responsibilities, causes, and social commitments, Timmy was finally able to let his hair down and just play.

I’d never had so much fun with anybody in my life.

When we weren’t hiking in the woods or ice skating, laughing our asses off during a snowball fight or burning up the slopes or the dance floor, we were holed up in our cabin, kicking back and just enjoying each other’s company. Timmy taught me how to build a fire so it would keep burning for hours and to more or less tolerate hot buttered   
rum, a drink that plays a helluva lot better in theory than in execution. I think he liked it more for the smell than the taste, because it reminded him of childhood vacations with Liz and her husband, Jim, who’d taught him to skate and ski and ride horses -- and when James and Marion weren’t looking, to mix a martini like a pro.

I wish I could have met old Jim. He’d been a politician, of course, and a lifelong republican, but not a hardnosed stuffed shirt like James. According to Timmy, he was laid back and accepting, so much so that he’d been the first family member Tim came out to when he was planning to show up at senior prom on the arm of another guy.

"It’s not who you love, it’s how you love them," Jim had told him. "Remember, you’re a Callahan, so hold your head high and don’t take guff off anyone." Then he’d slipped Timmy two fifties and a packet of rubbers, and taken him shopping for his first tuxedo.

The rubbers went unused, of    
course. Timmy had set his sites on life as a Jesuit and pretty much figured the vow of chastity would be easier to obey later if he never crossed that line to begin with. But the money bought him and the other kid a nice steak dinner and earned him his first session of slap-and-tickle behind the gym after the dance. The tux he wore is still wrapped in plastic and hanging in the back of our closet today. Tim says it’s hopelessly out of date and hasn’t fit him in years, but he and I both know none of that matters. It reminds him of someone who loved him and accepted him for who he was back when he wasn‘t so sure he accepted himself. He’ll never get rid of it.

With Christmas coming up so fast, we’d agreed to save up for that and not buy each other wedding presents. Naturally, we both went all out anyway. I knew he was crazy about chess but never got a chance to play anymore, so I blew a bundle on a big, fancy set with a marble board and crystal and onyx pieces. That meant I was more or less obligated to learn the game, of course, so he spent a good chunk of our down time teaching me the basics. Going in, I didn’t think I’d like it much, assuming it’d be tedious and boring, something designed for folks whose blood was blue but whose collars were anything but. But when I started getting into it, I found out it was all about strategy and observation -- two things that come pretty naturally to me. Like with the skiing, I sorta developed a knack.

Timmy’s gift to me was just as expensive but more practical, a state of the art digital camera to replace my old 35 millimeter, which was on its last legs. It had about 30 million mega pixels and all the bells and whistles, including video capacity and an adjustable tripod, so the second I saw it, I knew it was gonna blow my evidence-gathering capabilities off the charts. Naturally, I was in a big hurry to try it out. Since there were no cheating housewives in a ten mile radius -- or at least none I wanted to know about -- I took it for a test drive with Timmy instead, nailing about a thousand shots of him on skates or on skis, eating or sleeping or swimming laps in that big indoor pool, or sometimes just standing there with his arms folded across his chest, looking at me like I was crazy. After two days of listening to me beg, bitch and whine, he finally gave in and let me catch him in the buff as well. I don’t know who was the most shocked when he finally caved, him or me.

Whoever said we never see ourselves the way other people see us hit the nail on the head. Timmy just doesn’t think of himself as somebody who’s especially sensual or erotic. I don’t mean he doesn’t know he’s good looking, because he does. He’s even kinda vain about it, always making sure he’s wearing the right tie with the right suit and spending half his natural life in front of the mirror, checking to see if his hair looks just right. But it always kinda embarrasses him when somebody tells him he’s handsome, and it really pisses him off when some asshole calls him pretty -- not that I can blame him on that one.

Because he’s gentle and cultured and usually so soft-spoken, people tend to underestimate just how masculine he really is, and even though he’d never admit it, that can do a real number on his self-esteem. The thing is, anybody who takes the time to really get to know him figures out pretty quick that he’s the proverbial iron hand in the velvet glove. Underneath that elegant exterior, Timothy Callahan is tough as nails. It’s that faith thing again, see? Timmy   
believes in things, I mean really believes in them, and there’s nobody or nothing on this planet that can make him compromise his beliefs.

Because I know how strong he is, and because he knows I know, I can get away with the chivalry shtick, holding doors for him and bringing him flowers, laying on the sweet talk as thick as I like without him taking it as an affront to his manhood. If you wanna know the truth, he eats it up. Even after all these years, I still get a big, happy smile out of him when I call him beautiful, and sometimes if I time it just right and catch him off guard, I get a blush, too. And if I tell him he’s sexy, it flusters him so bad he’s nearly incapacitated. It’s like it still surprises him after all this time, which just about blows my mind. He may be the smartest guy in town, but he doesn’t have a clue how hot he really is.

At first, he was awkward and self-conscious during my little nude photo shoot, going stiff on me in all the wrong ways. To loosen him up, I put the camera down, stripped, and played around with him some, kissing and talking dirty to him -- which he claims to hate but not-so-secretly loves -- and getting in a friendly grope or two just because. Once he relaxed and started having fun with it, I picked up the camera again and fired away before he had the chance to get all self-conscious again.

The whole thing eventually disintegrated into a sexy wrestling match, and at one point, he grabbed the camera and caught me in few poses as well. I was kind of skinny back then and hadn’t started working out the way I do now, but he thought I looked pretty good, so I took his word for it and played along without a fuss. Once we’d filled up half the   
memory card with solo shots of each other, we set up the tripod and caught a few stills of the two of us together. They weren’t anything raunchy or overly graphic, just really intimate and romantic and kinda sweet. And it goes without saying that posing together like that led to other things.

Shameless bastard that I am, I would have loved to have tried out the video feature as well. But with Timothy, there are certain lines you just don’t cross, and that was one of them. As far as he’s concerned, no definitely means no, and I’d never dream of trying to talk him into something that makes him uncomfortable. We’d had our fun with the camera, and if I wanted a record of what came after, I’d just have to replay it in my head and be satisfied. And believe me, Timmy always made sure I was satisfied.

I didn’t know it at the time, but Timmy was planning on surprising me with a photo printer for Christmas. Once I got it set up, I cherry-picked the best shots from our    
shoot and gave him a surprise of his own, a photo album he keeps in the top drawer of his nightstand, right next to the lube and flavored body gel and a toy or two we pull out on special occasions. To this day, all he has to do is pull that    
drawer open and I’m instantly awake and erect and raring to go. And for that matter, so is he.

Two weeks seems like a long time when you’re planning a vacation, but when you’re as wrapped up in what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with as Timmy and I were, time gets by before you know it. All of a sudden, week one turned into week two, and Timmy just about worked himself into an anxiety attack, worrying how we were going to work in everything we wanted to do in the time we had left. His birthday had pretty much gotten lost in the pre-wedding chaos, so on our one-week anniversary, I wanted to treat him to a nice day out. We took a break from the slopes and worked in some of the touristy stuff I knew he loved, driving to town to do the brunch thing at a café where they served the best coffee I’d ever had in my life. After that, we hit some craft stores and a couple of historical sites, toured a Ben and Jerry’s factory where we scored plenty of free samples and a winery that kept limited winter hours.

Back at the resort, we   
packed away the presents we’d found for Marion and Liz, put the wine we’d bought on ice, then pulled on the penguin suits and went down to dinner. A swing orchestra was playing in the common room, so we stopped in for a while to listen and watch a few older couples cut the rug. I could tell Timmy was itching to join them, but neither of us knew shit about ballroom dancing, so for us, at least, it had to be a spectator sport.

I looked around for Carol and Mickey, expecting to see them there since I was pretty sure they were into that kind of stuff. I thought if I sweet-talked them just right, they might be willing to teach us a few moves. But they weren’t in sight -- damn few people were, come to think of it. There’d been a musical event every night, some that interested us and some we passed on, even though all of it seemed to draw a pretty good crowd. That night, the band was especially good -- even if they were playing stuff from our grandparents‘ time -- but only a couple dozen people were listening in, most of them part of the AARP set. We hung around long enough to finish our martinis and hear a few numbers, then we went on in to eat.

The restaurant was pretty empty for a Saturday night, and still no sign of Carol and Mickey. We had the best dinner of our trip, prime rib for me and some kind of scary-looking health food crap involving tofu for Timmy, followed by cheesecake so fucking good even he was willing to kick his cholesterol level up a few notches and split a piece with me. Always the P.R. guy, he put on a fairly convincing performance, smiling and laughing and making a big deal over the single red rose I’d had sent to the table, but I could tell something was bothering him. We both knew that Mickey was just making a comeback from a brutal round with lung cancer, and the night before, he’d kept clearing his throat and seemed kind of under the weather. Timmy, world-class worrier that he is, had made up his mind that something was seriously wrong.

To put his mind at ease, I called their room and talked to Carol, who assured me that Mickey hadn’t keeled over dead while we were out sightseeing. He’d caught a nasty bug, one of those 48-hour viral things that play hell with your respiratory system, but the staff doctor assured her that in a couple of days he’d be fine.

"You boys be careful," she told me. "Dr. Mullins said this thing’s sweeping through the guest registry like wildfire. It may not be serious, but it’s incredibly contagious and not something you want to deal with on your honeymoon. Be a little less social for the next few days, and whatever you do, don’t let anyone breathe on you except that handsome partner of yours."

 

"We’ll be fine," I said, forcing a laugh. But as I locked gazes with Timmy, who was fidgeting with his napkin and shooting me a questioning look, I felt my heart sink. My immune system was so on the ball it could practically turn away missile fire, but Timmy’s was for shit, and he caught every respiratory infection that came down the pike. I had to get him out of there.

One of the resort’s brochures had mentioned that late evening sleigh rides were available when the weather cooperated, so I’d booked one for that night, thinking it would give Timmy a nice surprise. It sounded like a corny and sappy and sweet kind of thing to do, and Donald Strachey, your bad boy P.I. _du jour_ seemed to be rapidly turning into a corny and sappy and sweet kind of guy -- at least as far as Timmy was concerned. Besides, my goal for the trip was to romance the hell out of my husband, and it sounded like as good an excuse as any to snuggle under a blanket with him in the moonlight and maybe cop a feel when nobody was looking. I’d have to be crazy to let an opportunity like that pass me by.

The moon wasn’t out as far as I could see, but there were plenty of stars, and it was definitely cold enough to justify a clandestine make out session under the heavy wool blanket our driver provided. Once Timmy stopped worrying that Mickey was having a relapse, he relaxed and really seemed to enjoy himself, eating up all the sappy romanticism I could throw his way. He said he loved the ride and he loved me, and whispered that he planned to show me exactly how much once we got back to our cabin. I whispered back that I was going to hold him to it.

By the time we made the short hike to our cabin, Timmy was shivering some, which kind of worried me, since I’m the one who’s usually hypersensitive to the cold. I told him to head straight for the hot tub while I put on some music and poured the wine. It was chilly in the room, so I took a few minutes to get a fire going, too, thinking how good it would feel in there by the time we got done with our soak. I lost the tux and pulled on a robe, then made a dash out the back door, yelping as the freezing night air hit my skin, then groaning in pure ecstasy as I slid into that swirling, steaming water.

Timmy took the wine glasses from me and set them aside, then pulled me close. We talked a little, performing a post-mortem on our day, and traded kisses between sips of wine as we indulged in a little light foreplay. He was trying, I could tell he was really trying, but he seemed tired and was slow to get going, which wasn’t like him. The wine was making us both sleepy, so I let him off the hook with a rain check and just held him for a while, enjoying the contrast between the crisp air and the hot water, and especially the feel of his bare body against mine. Not in a sexual way, necessarily, but in a comfortable, lazy, it’s-so-fucking-awesome-being-married-to-this-guy kind of way. He must’ve felt the same, because he gradually went limp against me, and before I knew it, he was sound asleep with his head against my shoulder. I rescued what was left of his wine before it could spill into the water, then turned off the jets and roused him long enough to get us bundled up in our robes and hustled inside to bed.

I woke up around dawn, wondering just how big a fire I’d managed   
to build the night before, since I was roasting. But once I got my bearings, I figured out that the hearth had long since gone cold. The heat was coming off Timmy in waves. Just as I was wondering how I was gonna disentangle the covers without waking him and let some of it dissipate, he burrowed in even deeper, clutching me spasmodically as his teeth chattered. So what the hell. I worked one leg out from under the covers in an effort to regulate my own temperature, then lopped it over the top of him, pulling him even tighter against me as I tucked the blanket so high around his neck and head nothing showed but his face. He blinked at me, his eyes glittering with fever, and tried to suppress a cough. I knew we were in for it.

As far as sick people go, I’m as high maintenance as you can get. If I don’t feel good, nobody around me feels good either because they have to put up with my constant whining, bitching, and general purpose foul-tempered    
assholishness for the duration. But Timmy? He’s a breeze.

I’d seen Timmy through enough migraines, colds, sinus infections, and rounds of bronchitis by then to know that he was the least demanding patient on the planet. Almost too undemanding, as a matter of fact, because he’d rather suffer in silence than ask for the least little thing. Over the past year, I’d become an expert at second guessing his needs, figuring out when to force feed him meds and when to bully him into staying hydrated, when to pile on extra blankets and when to give him air. When he was feeling rotten, Timmy mostly just wanted to be held. So that’s how I spent the next couple of days -- kicking back on the couch as I watched the fire or channel-surfed, holding Timmy and keeping him warm and quiet so he could sleep off the rotten bug that had bitten him so hard.

I spent a lot of time thinking as I lay there, planning for a future I finally had reason to believe in. I    
wanted to get my business out of the red, to start putting some money aside for that someday trip to the ocean, or maybe, if it was what Timmy wanted, to put it toward the down payment on a house. I laughed a little at the thought. Of course it was what Timmy would want -- the man oozed domesticity out of every pore. He was all about security and structure, about putting down roots and watching them grow. Since I was all about Timmy, the thought suited me just fine.

Funny how domestic my dreams had become, how freaking commonplace and ordinary. As a kid, I’d wanted to be a football star, though even I knew down deep that I’d never have the height or build for it. When I hit high school, I made the team anyway through sheer determination and meanness, and played like a madman until I got hurt on the field and messed up a knee. It healed okay, but by that time football season was over. My mother made it clear I wouldn’t be on the roster next season.

I’d read a few true crime novels along the way and kinda had a gift for solving puzzles nobody else could work out, so I spent my junior year dreaming about    
being a forensic pathologist. But my grades sucked and so did my ACT scores -- "He’s smart, but he doesn’t apply himself" -- so no decent college would have me. Then along came the army, where I _did_ apply myself, and I thought okay, this is it, I’ve found my niche. As long as I keep my head down and my motivation level up, my opportunities here are    
endless.

Huh. Shows how much I know.

Most of the time, I was okay with it. Things just sort of play out the way they’re gonna play out, and there’s not much you can do with it except roll with the punches. Kyle…well. Kyle hurt.    
He was a wound that never seemed to heal in more ways and on more levels than I liked to think about. About a hundred times a day, I thought about spilling my guts to Timmy about the whole thing, and about a hundred times a day, I came up with a reason not to. Looking back, it seems so stupid to have bottled all that guilt and misery up for so long, when all it took in the end was one night of opening up the floodgates with Timothy for me to see it was okay to finally let myself off the hook.

Timmy would probably say everything happens for a reason and in its own time, and I guess he’d be right on the money with that one. To be honest, I was afraid to tell him about Kyle, scared shitless that he’d be disgusted with me for betraying the guy I loved, that he’d blame me for what happened just as much as I blamed myself.

Yeah, I know. I should have trusted him. But back then, trust was still a new and alien concept for me, and I wasn’t ready to test its boundaries just yet. So if I sometimes got pissed off or depressed or felt cheated, I tried to keep it on the down low. The past was the past. It wasn‘t like there was any way I could go back in time and fix it. Besides, with Timmy in my life, it was getting harder all the time to make myself believe I’d gotten stuck with the short end of the stick. I mean, what more could I want, really, than what I already had?

So yeah, my dreams were pretty ordinary -- a house in a decent neighborhood where the neighbors weren’t scared we‘d corrupt their kids, white fences and a flower bed, cutting the grass on Saturday and taking out the trash, maybe surprising Timmy with a hard luck case from the pound to take on evening walks or to roust us out of bed when we were being lazy and trying to sleep in. Most of all, I just wanted to be good to Timmy, to be a good husband to him, to be able to hold up my end of the bargain financially and emotionally. To make him feel as good about himself as he made me feel, to be there for him when he was down or pissed off or all sick and feverish and his nose wouldn’t stop running, not even when he was dead to the world.

Every once in a while, he’d snuffle in his sleep like a little kid and suck in air through his mouth because his sinuses were too clogged for oxygen to get in the regular way. I‘d scoot up some, rearranging us so his head was elevated and he could breathe more easily. Usually he‘d settle back down right away, but if he opened his eyes, I‘d dab at the corner of each one to get the crusties out and mop his nose with a tissue -- gently, though, because I knew how sore it had to be. He’d give me a look, make a noise that sounded like the beginnings of a grumble that ended in a cough, but he wouldn’t try to grab the tissue himself of push me away, and I knew he had to really feel like shit to let me baby him that way.

Whenever he was conscious enough to swallow, I’d try to get something down him, sticking with ginger ale the first day because his stomach was upset, then soup and hot tea to get his sinuses open once he started feeling a little better. He worried himself prematurely gray over whether or not I was gonna get sick, too, and bitched at me for staying cooped up with him when I could be hitting the slopes, at least, and enjoying our vacation. It was all show, though. Both of us knew I wasn’t going anywhere.

We’d watch part of a movie or play cards if he felt up to it, or when he had a surge of energy, soak in the hot tub, which really seemed to clear up his congestion. Mostly, we just snuggled by the fire, him burrowing in like a human mole as I stroked his hair or rubbed his back, not really talking much, just lying there feeling connected to the other half of ourselves. Like Timmy always said, there are a thousand ways for two men to be intimate with each other, and only a few of them have anything to do with sex. I hated that he felt bad, hated that a stupid virus was keeping him from doing something he loved. But was I sorry to have that chance to cocoon with him, to take care of him and do the little things that made him feel better, maybe not in any big way, but in a lot of small ones? Not on your life.

By the third day, he was starting to get restless. The fever was gone and his concentration was back, so we spent a lot of time honing my skills on the chessboard. I beat him twice and felt pretty sure the second time around that I’d done it on my own without him throwing the game. That evening, he felt like going down to dinner, so we dressed up and I had more flowers brought to the table, though no wine, since he was still on cold meds. He didn’t eat much. His appetite wasn’t back full force just yet, but we danced some and called it an early night. Once we were back in the cabin, we spent some more quality time in the hot tub, and he wasn’t shy about showing me what he did have an appetite for. We made love out there as the snow came down, and I started to think that maybe New England winters weren’t so bad after all.

* * * *

We ended our vacation the way we started it, burning up the slopes, the dance floor and the mattress in turns, only being a little more careful to pace ourselves so Timmy’d have a chance to get his stamina back. We played around some with the idea of extending our stay through the holidays. Thanks to Marion and the other wedding guests, we had the funds to do it, and neither of us had to be back at work until after the first of the year. In the end, it was me who admitted I was ready to call the trip a wrap.

It wasn’t because    
I wasn’t enjoying myself, because I was. But this was going to be our first Christmas as a married couple, and while I’ve never exactly gotten misty-eyed over holly and fir trees and all the trappings, I’d helped lug enough boxes of ornaments from our old apartment to our new digs to know that Timmy did. As much as he loved skiing, it would have broken his heart to miss out on covering every inch of the apartment in red and green, and his heart was one thing I had no intention of ever breaking. Besides, there’s just something special, something just totally _right_ , about spending your first Christmas together in your own home.

We’d gone our separate ways the year before. Timmy’d driven down to Poughkeepsie on the 23rd and hadn’t come back til the 28th, and although he’d invited me along, I’d been an ass and turned him down. We’d only been dating a couple of weeks, and I was still being skittish and stupid, thinking it was too much, too soon and that a big family celebration was probably the type of party I didn’t have any business crashing just yet. I was pretty pissed at myself after he left, of course, and probably should have followed him down once I came to my senses. But I was too chickenshit to do it, and ended up staying home and throwing myself a bourbon-enhanced pity party instead.

To tell the truth, Christmas had never been all that big of a deal to me. Growing up, it had been a no-frills event, with Mom making me haul the same scrawny fake tree up the basement steps every Christmas Eve, throwing a few glass balls and some red tinsel on it, and calling it a night. The next morning, she’d get up early enough to toss together a couple of green bean casseroles, and we’d make the rounds, showing up at Grammy Rosa’s in time for lunch, then heading for Grandma and Grandad Strachey’s for supper. 

I liked going to Grammy Rosa’s because she was good to me and was a great cook, plus there were always a couple of presents with my name on them under her tree. But I could have done without the trip to Dad’s parents’ just fine. There were no presents there for me or anybody else, and their couch smelled like our ratty old red tinsel -- musty and stale, like it had spent the last year in a leaky basement. We’d hang out there long enough to eat and hear why society was going to the dogs and how my old man was going to roast in the fires of hell for running off on us the way he did, then we’d go home, take down the tree, watch TV for an hour or two, and head for bed. And that was pretty much that.

The couple of Christmases I’d spent in the army were pretty low key, and I’d done my best to ignore the ones since, holing up in my crappy apartment and drinking the day away, then hitting the bars that night in search of some anonymous holiday head. Joy to the world, amen. But I don’t have to tell you that having Timmy in my life put the whole thing in a different perspective. Thanks to him, there _was_ joy in my world, and if he wanted to bury me in mistletoe and force feed me fruitcake and eggnog til I puked, I was going to go along with it without complaint. Hell, I was actually looking forward to it, getting kind of excited about the idea of helping him pick out a tree and decorating it together, sitting through midnight mass with him if he decided to go, then coming home to wine and candles and a little late night love as Nat King Cole roasted chestnuts over and over again on that open fire. We didn’t have a fireplace at the new apartment, and I’d never roasted a chestnut in my life, not that it mattered. With a fire or without, between Timmy and me, we had all the warmth in the world. 

So we said goodbye to Carol and Mickey two days before Christmas and set the GPS for home. The drive took almost twice as long as it should have because there was a wreck ahead -- lots of twisted metal and general mayhem involving a jackknifed semi and a Subaru, according to the radio. I’ll be the first to admit I turn into a classic type A personality when I get behind the wheel, and sitting in stand-still traffic for two hours followed by a detour that took us thirty-five miles out of our way didn’t exactly sit well with me. I snarled and snarked, but Timmy let it roll off him the way he usually does when I lose my cool. We dropped off the SUV we’d rented as soon as we hit Albany, and I really I hated to see it go, hated that after living in high style for the last couple of weeks, I had to drive Timmy the rest of the way home in my coughing and sputtering, miserable little rat trap of a car. 

The battery was dead, of course, and the Hertz guy had to give us a jump. But the goddamned thing wouldn’t hold a charge, so we ended up hiking three quarters of a mile down the road to buy a new one at AutoZone. By the time we switched out the batteries, it was almost 3:00 and in spite of the blistering cold, I was sweating bullets, because I had my heart set on getting the final word on my HIV status that day. I was pretty sure the clinic was only open til 4:00, and if I didn’t make it there before they closed, I’d be waiting until the 26th for my results. I’d have to pull a hit and run with Timmy, pretty much dropping him curbside along with the luggage and flooring it out of there if I was gonna have a prayer of making it on time. No matter what excuse I came up with, I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to like it. 

Since we were both starving, I took time to hit the drive-thru at Wendy’s, filling the car with the scent of artery-clogging goodness. I crammed a Triple Baconator with extra cheese down my throat as I drove, knowing I‘d probably pay for that grease bomb later, while Timmy picked at some kind of rabbit food -- a caesar salad, I think. His greens didn’t look any too fresh, but he didn’t say a word, just pushed aside the stuff that was going brown around the edges and concentrated on the rest. I was pissed, I mean really fucking pissed -- not so much on my own behalf, but on his. Our homecoming was turning into such a fucking mess. It had to have been one hell of a reality check for him, even though he never complained, not even once.

“Let it go,” he said quietly as I pulled into the lot of our complex and killed the engine. Then he squeezed my hand, and just like that, I did it, I let go of my pissy mood, because if he wasn’t bitching about the way the day was going, I sure as hell didn’t have any right to. He’d been patient and accommodating the whole time, while I’d pretty much acted like a jerk. 

“I gotta take off,” I told him once we’d dumped the last of the luggage in the middle of the living room floor. “I wish I didn’t have to, but there’s something I need to take care of, and it really won’t wait.”

Anybody else would have grilled me for details or started an argument. Instead, he just sighed. “While you’re gone, I’ll get our clothes unpacked and start a laundry. I think I’ll call around to see if there are any Christmas tree lots with a reasonably good selection left, then try to figure out what we’re going to do about dinner. I need to go to the grocery and drop our tuxedos by the cleaners….”

“I really feel like shit for hanging you with all that,” I said, wondering for the thousandth time how I managed to luck out and snag the one guy on the planet who knew when to ask questions and when to just let it ride. “I won’t be gone long, I promise. Tell you what, as soon as I get back, I’ll take you to the grocery. We can swing by the cleaners on the way. Then we’ll come back here and get dressed, because I’m taking you out to dinner, and it sure as hell won’t be to someplace that gives you indigestion in a to-go bag. After that, we’ll find a lot and pick out a nice tree together. Just keep in mind that this is our place and not Liz’s, okay? A six or seven-footer will fit in here just fine, but a twelve-footer won’t.”

“I’ll try to restrain myself. But the tree lot first, okay? If we don‘t go soon, there might not be anything left to choose from. The suits and shopping can wait   
til tomorrow if they have to.” 

I glanced at my watch, knowing I was gonna be thoroughly    
fucked if I didn’t haul ass. “An hour max, then I’m all yours for the rest of the night,” I told him, snagging a quick kiss.

“Only the rest of the night?”

“And tomorrow night,” I called over my shoulder as I bolted out the door. “And the night after that, and the night after that….”

* * * *

We spent Christmas Eve morning running errands and restocking the pantry, then sifting through the mountain of ads and bills that had piled up while we were away. We both had about a dozen emails from Mickey, mostly humor pieces he’d forwarded, plus one personal note inviting us up for dinner and drinks once the holidays were over. While Timmy knocked out another load of laundry, I figured out how to upload the pictures we’d taken to my hard drive, and sent a couple of shots of the four of us to Mickey, along with a note saying we were looking forward to seeing them again. After lunch, we hit the mall for a few last-minute gifts Timmy swore Liz and Marion couldn’t live without. He caved, just like I knew he would, and picked up a few things for his father, too, though God knows the old bastard hardly deserved them. 

The game plan was for us to have a nice, quite Christmas morning all to ourselves, than to drive down to Poughkeepsie in time for the evening festivities at Liz’s. Marion would be there for sure, plus most of the relatives I’d met at the wedding, but the jury was still out as far as James was concerned. For Timmy’s sake, I tried to act like I genuinely hoped he would make an appearance. Also for Timmy’s sake, I promised myself I wouldn’t punch his lights out if he did.

We decorated the tree that evening and wrapped the booty we’d bought, then threw together something quick and easy for dinner. I guess Timmy figured I’d paid my dues as far as churchy stuff was concerned, because he passed on my offer to go to midnight mass, suggesting a more intimate way to end the evening instead. He cranked up a Christmas CD, instrumental stuff by some big band leader from the ‘forties, while I turned off the lights and lit the tree. We sipped martinis and reminisced about our trip, which led to a discussion about how we could put the money we had left to good use. 

“Why don’t you use it as a down payment on a new car?” he suggested. “You spend so much time doing surveillance work, and I worry about you sitting out there night after night with a heater that only works half the time.”

“I can’t draw attention to myself by letting the car run anyway, sweetheart, so it doesn’t really matter if the heater works or not.”

“Still, the engine’s no more reliable than the heater. It scares me to think what would happen if it didn’t start when you needed to get   
out of a dangerous situation.”

“It hasn’t let me down yet. Don’t worry about me, okay? You know I’ll always do whatever it takes to come home to you. You know, we could put the money toward a car for you, though. I hate that you have to take the bus all the time.”

“I don’t mind the bus, and I can always call a cab if I need to. Or get a lift from a handsome private investigator I know.”

I chuckled and scooted closer to him on the couch. “Always at your service, sir. There is a fee attached, however.” Then I nipped his ear and whispered something nasty into it, something that made his face get even hotter than when he‘d had the fever. Something that made him    
_  
squirm.   
_

“That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard,” he said, laughing, “but it’s creative, I’ll grant you that.”

“That’s why you love me.”

We didn’t talk for a while, since our mouths were occupied with other things. When we finally had to break for air, he said, “Stop trying to distract me. We’re going to settle this money issue before we go any further.”

“Taskmaster,” I growled, turning the word into something seductive, something _dirty_. But he just gave me that look, the one that said he was finished playing, so I did my best to ignore the mating call his body was singing to mine and concentrate. “We’ve been talking about pooling our funds into one joint account anyway, so why don’t we open a savings account while we’re at it?”

“That would definitely be the most prudent thing to do,” he agreed. “I’d certainly feel better knowing we had a nest egg saved back for a rainy day.”

“Actually, I’ve been thinking about doing something to keep the rain off permanently.” I told him what I’d been thinking then, about the house with the flowerbed in the nice neighborhood and the mutt that could roust us out of bed on Sunday mornings. He caught my hand and kissed it, then pressed it firmly against his crotch. I laughed softly, rubbing the swelling, twitching piece of heaven between his thighs. Only Timmy. Who else could get a hard on from the thought of being locked into mortgage payments for the next thirty years? But I knew it wasn’t really the idea of mortgage payments that got him going, it was the fact that he’d be doing it with me. And that reminded me of something else, something I hoped would get him worked up even more. I treated him to a long, leisurely fondle, enough to get him glassy-eyed and panting, then broke it off long enough to hand him his martini glass and reach under the couch for something I’d hidden there earlier that evening. 

“Finish your drink,” I said. “You’re gonna need it, because I’m about to take you to the bedroom and make love to you so long and hard you won’t stop screaming my name til New Year’s. But first, I want you to open this.”

“I thought we were waiting til morning to open gifts,” he said, setting his drink aside as he eyed the foil-covered package in my lap. “You said you wanted this Christmas to be all about tradition.”

“I do, but this is something special. I want you to see it tonight. I need you to see it tonight,” I finished, suddenly nervous, hearing my own voice trailing off in a hoarse whisper. I cleared my throat, then grabbed my drink and knocked it back. Then what the hell. I gulped the rest of his as well. 

“Donald,” he began. I couldn’t see his eyes because the Christmas lights were bouncing off his glasses, and all I could make out were red and green and blue and yellow sparkles. But that worry line between his brows was getting deeper every second, and I could hear something that sounded an awful lot like fear in his voice. I hadn’t meant to scare him, but I guess that was exactly what I was doing. God knows I was scaring myself.

“Just open it,” I said, pressing the package into his hands. He hooked a fingertip under a folded corner of the foil and ripped it open, revealing the gift box beneath. He lifted the lid, then stared first at the stack of papers inside, then at me, then back at the papers again. 

“These look like lab results.”

“They are. Can you read them? Do you need me to turn on a lamp?”

“I can see,” he said, lifting the papers out of the box and bringing them closer to his face. He adjusted his glasses and I knew he was probably squinting, trying to make out the print in the dim light. “H.I.V. tests,” he said, flipping through the stack, “all negative. There are   
so many of them! Donald, there must be…”

“A dozen. One for every month we’ve been together.”

“I don’t understand. When we made love for the first time, you told me you’d been tested and that you were clean. Why would you keep retesting month after month unless…” he hesitated, and I knew exactly what he was going to say next before the words were out of his mouth. “Unless you were still putting yourself at risk, unless you were still...no.” He said it again, firmly, with finality and so much strength of conviction I wanted to hug him til his bones popped. “No. You wouldn’t do that. But why….”

“I‘d never want anybody else, honey. Not as long as I had you. But I was so stupid, Timmy. I did so many stupid things before I met you. I always used protection, but nothing’s a hundred percent. I don’t care what the experts say, nobody knows for sure how long it takes something to show up in a blood test, how long this stuff takes to incubate.” I guess I was crying. I knew I had to be crying. I’d promised myself I wasn’t going to fall apart like that, but my face was wet and my voice was breaking, and it didn’t seem like there was much I could do to stop it. “I love you so much, Timmy   
. I know I’ve been holding back on you, that I’ve drawn all these stupid lines I wouldn’t let you cross, and I know you didn’t understand why. I just couldn’t take a chance on passing something on to you. I’d rather die than pass something on to you.”

“Baby,” he said, slipping off the couch and onto his knees in front of me, scattering a year’s worth of lab results on the floor as he gathered me in his arms and held me so hard I thought I actually did hear something pop. We were in such a tight press, though, I couldn’t tell whether it was him or me. “I wish you had just talked to me. We could have taken precautions. You didn’t have to hold back all this time. Condoms….”

“Condoms break, maybe get holes in them that a microbe could slip through,” I told him. I was trying to take hold of myself and stop sniveling on his shoulder like some weepy kid, but I didn’t want him to let go of me, not even for a second. “I had to know that you were safe. Not safe-er. Safe. Nothing matters to me as much as keeping you safe.”

He pulled back a little then, wiped my face, kissed me. “We’d be safe now,” he said, smiling. He kissed me again, first my lips, then the tip of my nose, and bumped his forehead against mine. I knew he was trying to coax a smile out of me, too, and I finally managed a weak one.

“We’d be safe now,” I agreed. 

He rose then, a little stiffly, and I felt a surge of guilt, thinking what all that time on the floor must have done to his knees. But he was still smiling, touching me here and there in that soft, gentle way of his   
, and the guilt I felt gradually gave way to something else.

“Merry Christmas, sweetheart,” I said, brushing his lips with my own. 

“It will be,” he murmured. Then he took my hand.

He turned off the tree lights and led me to the bedroom, where we undressed each other by candlelight, drawing it out, exploring every newly exposed patch of skin with our eyes, our fingers, our mouths. Timmy’d put the CD player on repeat mode and turned the volume up just enough for us to hear it down the hall, and we swayed to the soft music for a while, warm skin against warm skin, together and at peace. For some reason, I thought of the mass we’d skipped, thinking that it might have been a candlelight service, and that soft music might have been playing there, too. I understood the comfort Timmy seemed to find in his faith, and I hoped he didn’t mind missing out on his yearly tradition too much. Then he rested his head on my shoulder and sighed such a contented sigh I knew beyond a doubt that there was no place he’d rather be than right there, alone in that candlelit bedroom with me. 

His hands slid across my shoulders and down my back in the lightest ghost of a caress, rubbing soft circles, touching every part of me he could get to. I courted his tongue with my own, tasting a familiar sweetness that was his alone, mixed with a phantom hint of martini. Easing my bottom lip into his mouth, he sucked it gently. Those tender little pulls went straight to my libido -- and to my heart. With Kyle, kissing had almost been a form of physical combat, we were always in so much of a rush, so frantic and needy, trying to eat each other alive, to work a night’s worth of heat and pent up desire into a few stolen minutes. With us, it was all fire and fury and the thrill of danger. There was plenty of passion there, and on my end, at least, love. But romance just didn’t happen. It didn’t have time to. 

I’d never kissed the guys I’d tricked with since, never wanted to get that close, never wanted to exchange bodily fluids with them in any way. I was there to perform a base act and get the hell out, not to form some sort of lasting human connection. But with Timmy, there was time, always time, and I wanted to be as close to him as I could get. Timmy was wine and roses, holding hands and pillow talk and moonlight in your martinis. He was sweet, goofy smiles and long, lazy weekends   
in bed, shared bubble baths and slow, deep, drugging kisses that lasted for hours. With him, see, kissing wasn’t just a form of foreplay, it was an end in itself. And he was damned good at it.

I’ve always heard people say that they’ve felt time stand still, but I never experienced it myself before I met Timmy. The CD played through and ended and played through again, and still we kept kissing, somehow finding our way onto the bed, lost in each other and that incredible warmth and closeness. At some point, his glasses had gone by the wayside, but I didn’t know if he’d taken them off or if I had, or where they’d ended up. I just knew I could see his eyes, his beautiful blue eyes, and that I could die a happy man knowing I’d never see anything else again. 

Timmy could never be called a passive lover, but he’d always been an accommodating one. If he knew there was something I wanted or needed, he made damned sure I got it. That night he was soft and yielding, trusting me, with that unshakable faith of his, to lead him only to places that were safe and mutually pleasing. I knew he had no qualms about being penetrated. I’d fingered him before, bringing him to climax by sucking him off while gently stroking his prostate. He’d tried to return the favor only once, but took the hint and backed down immediately when I froze, one step away from shutting down completely. Donald Strachey doesn’t bottom for anyone, never has and never will. I hadn’t said the words, but he got the message loud and clear just the same.

Timmy had a box of condoms squirreled away next to the lube in his nightstand. We’d never talked about them, but I knew they were there, that he always kept them on hand in case I came to my senses and was finally willing to do what most normal, healthy gay men do when their bodies come together. So when he pulled out the lube and handed it to me, I glanced at the drawer and then back at him, waiting for him to dig out the rubbers as well, to give me one or maybe make one of his little rituals out of putting it on me himself. Instead, he looked me dead in the eye and shut the drawer, then settled back on the bed, knees bent and legs spread, his hips pulsing in a subtle, sexy rhythm. His cock, as ruddy and engorged as I‘d ever seen it, swayed with the motion. 

I had it in my mouth almost faster than I saw it. It tasted like the inside of his mouth, clean and sweet and familiar. My head moved in sync with his thrusts, matching the rhythm of his hips pulse for pulse. His hands found their way into my hair and he clutched at it, moaning in pleasure. But he was peaking fast, and after a couple of minutes he pushed me away, letting me know that on this night of all nights he wanted to set a leisurely pace. Wherever we were going, he wanted us to get there together. With an overwhelming sense of loss, I let his cock slip away from my lips and sat back so I could look at him, longing to just go on making him feel good, so good he couldn’t stand it, to suck him off right then and there, then let him slowly build up for a second round as I put that lube I was holding to good use and made him mine. 

_  
Made him mine.   
_   


All this time, I’d focused on what it would be like to be inside Timmy, how good it would feel, how much it would mean to him as well as to me. But wasn’t he mine already? He’d already given himself to me every way one man can give himself to another. If one of us was holding out on the other, it sure as hell wasn’t him. What was I so afraid of? He’d been inside me in a hundred different ways already -- inside my head, inside my heart. Why not take it to the physical level as well?

I’d spent a year thinking about this moment, dreaming about it, planning for it. I’d choreographed every second of it in my head, how I’d touch Timmy, how I’d hold him, how I’d be so gentle with him and so loving that’d he’d never, ever doubt for one second how much he meant to me. But as he lay there in front of me, those blue eyes of his shining with love and lust and so much trust -- above and beyond everything else, so much trust, so much _faith_ \-- I knew that I’d gotten it all wrong. 

“No,” I told him. “Not this time.”

He looked at me, startled, as I took his hand and kissed it. Then I handed the lube right back to him, folding his fingers around it and sealing them in place with another smacking kiss. 

“Donald,” he began.

“Timothy.” 

One of the best things about Timmy is that I hardly ever have to spell anything out for him. He doesn’t just get what I say, he understands what I can’t find the words for, too. He sat up and caught my face between his hands. “Are you sure?” he asked softly. 

Was I sure? I was scared shitless if you want to know the truth. I was scared because I’d never done it before and knew it was probably going to hurt, and even more scared of opening myself up that way, of being that vulnerable, of giving up a degree of control I might never be able to get back. But this wasn’t some stranger off the street, this was Timmy, my Timmy, and all of a sudden I knew I wanted this, wanted it so bad I couldn‘t stand it. I wasn’t sure of much in my life, but I was sure of him, and I needed him to know that. I needed to carve it in stone. 

“Don’t keep me waiting,“ I said. “I’ve kept us both waiting too long already.“ 

He looked at me for a long, loaded minute. Then he just sort of folded himself around me, holding me tight and rocking a little, not saying a word. “Okay,” he finally whispered, sounding choked up as hell. He cleared his throat. “Okay.” Then he pulled back just enough to kiss me, and the expression   
on his face told me everything I needed to know about how he felt about me at that moment, what this meant to him, how right I was to put myself in his hands. Nobody had ever looked at me like that before and nobody else has since. But then again, nobody’s ever seen me the way Timmy does. 

Patience has never exactly been the man’s chief virtue. He goes into full-fledged freakout mode if a bus runs three minutes late, if we’re not dressed and ready half an hour before it’s time to leave for some boring political event, if assignments he’s delegated to the staff peons aren’t finished -- like, yesterday. But when it comes to my comfort level and my feelings, it’s a different story. At first I was tense, skittish almost, but he courted and soothed me, rubbing the full length of his body against mine, pressing and gliding, stimulating every inch of my skin with every inch of his. We rolled across the bed, limbs tangled, his hands and mouth everywhere, touching and tasting, stroking and sucking. 

Eventually, he settled me on my back and pried himself loose long enough to slide a pillow under me, elevating my hips. He leaned over until our foreheads pressed together. I thought he was going to ask if I was sure again, but instead he said, “I would never do anything to hurt you, Don.” Then he nudged my knees apart and spread my cheeks, going in for the kill. I felt his tongue circling my opening, tickling and teasing it, keeping it light at first, almost playful. Then he really got down to business, lifting my right leg over his shoulder for easier access, gradually increasing pressure until that warm, moist tip penetrated me, but just barely. It felt strange at first, but also incredibly erotic. I guess I must have whimpered, because he backed off a little and kissed me there, then traveled forward to nuzzle my balls, drawing first one and then the other into his mouth. 

When I felt the cool dampness of the lube, I went into sensory overload, so overwhelmed with pure, unfiltered feeling that it was more than I could stand, more than I could process at one time. Something had to give, to be put aside to make room for what I knew was coming next, and that something was fear. I let it slip away like a fragment of a bad dream, and in the instant it did, every muscle in my body relaxed. I felt his finger slip inside me, sliding forward smoothly and easily until the tip hit a hot spot so sensitive I almost came off the bed, shocked and shaken by a surge of pure, almost painfully intense pleasure.

“Gotcha,” he said, laughing quietly at the expression on my face, which had to be one for the books. He licked the head of my cock, then pulled the whole thing into his mouth, sucking it in a slow, sensual, pulsing rhythm that kept time with his internal caress. After a while, he added more lube and a second finger, then finally a third, taking his good, sweet time with it, his mouth continuing those expert pulls on my erection as I writhed and gasped beneath him. When we both agreed I was ready, he withdrew his fingers and sat back on his heels to prep first me, and then himself. 

He eased his way in gently but deliberately, his eyes locked on mine the whole time. I’d be lying if I said it was the most comfortable experience of my life. My insides ached from the unfamiliar feeling of fullness, and the rim burned from all that stretching. Once he was inside me, he stayed completely still, giving me a chance to relax and unclench and get used to all the new sensations coming my way. After a couple of minutes, I guess you could say I acclimated, and my dick, which had gone soft at the moment of entry, made a full recovery.

“Timmy,” I said, just because it felt good to say his name. “Timothy.“ I honed in on his face because, come on, with him around, where else would I ever want to look? I began to move beneath him, drawing him into an easy rhythm. The fullness felt good now, comfortably arousing. When he found my prostate, I yelped from the sheer shock of it and locked a leg around him, my heel bumping his pale, perfect ass. He closed his eyes and threw his head back, shivering, but in a good way. When his eyes opened again, they crinkled around the corners, and he shifted some, supporting his weight on one arm so he could brush his fingers across my cheek. I’d expected to see him lost in the moment, blissed out the way I probably would’ve been if the situation was reversed. He was enjoying himself, there wasn’t a helluva lot of doubt about that. But for him, that wasn’t the point. For him, I was the point. It was all about me, see? For Timmy, I’d been the point since the day we met. 

Timmy believed in things. Timmy cared about things, was passionate about them, threw his    
heart into them. It was no secret that he loved me. I never doubted that. But I saw right then and there that I would always come first with him, that this is the way it would always be, that for every hour and day and week and month and year of the rest of his life, what Timothy J. Callahan would be all about, the only thing he would ever really be all about, was me. My body, my stupid male ego, and my heart -- yeah, even my pissed off, suspicious, battle-scarred train wreck of a heart -- would always be safe in those elegant, perfectly manicured hands. And I’d be a pretty lousy excuse for   
a man if I didn’t spend the rest of my life making damned sure he knew it went both ways.

It suddenly seemed like there was still too much distance between us. I pulled him down so I could   
kiss him, I mean really kiss him, trying with everything I had in me to pour all the love and wonder and sense of discovery I was feeling at that moment into that kiss. He shifted again and his hands found mine, pinning them to the mattress as he laced our fingers together. Then he adjusted his angle and nailed my prostate again, and the shock of it was so intense it just about sent me though the roof. My whole body convulsed and I know I must have cried out, but the sound of it was lost inside his mouth. Another slight adjustment, and he nudged my prostate again, then again and again with smooth, strong, steady strokes, falling into a gradually accelerating rhythm as I shuddered and sobbed, pain and fear and doubt long forgotten because I’d lost myself, totally fucking lost myself, to the sheer force of nature that was Timothy. He was gasping and shaking every bit as hard as I was, but still focused in that weird, unworldly way of his, puffing his breath into my mouth and sucking my own deep into his lungs, breathing life into me as I gave my life, all of it, to him.

Donald Strachey doesn’t bottom for anybody. What a crock of shit. Between us, between Timmy and me, there was no top and no bottom, no masculine and no feminine, no submission and no dominance. Next time, we’d switch off and I’d be on top. Or maybe not. It really didn’t matter, because what we were doing had nothing to do with power or control and everything to do with trust. This was no base act. This act, this holy act of worship, was a sacrifice that wasn’t a sacrifice at all, because nothing was lost, nothing at all, and everything good and decent and sweet and sustaining was gained. Timmy was with me. Hell, Timmy was part of me. And the one thing he’d spent the last year trying to get through my thick skull finally sank home. 

I would never be alone again.

My breath was hitching and so was his, his thrusts becoming rougher and more erratic. I was as hard as I’d ever been in my life, and between the sporadic press of his body against my erection and the more rhythmic friction against my prostate, I was teetering on that very thin line between pleasure and pain. Knowing I couldn’t stand it much longer, I rocked my hips against him, groaning   
and straining, clenching his fingers, begging him with hoarse, guttural cries to bury himself even deeper inside me. The force of it tipped me over the edge and I took him with me, tumbling together in a freefall of light and sound and excruciating, almost unbearable, release. 

Somewhere down the line, I’d heard climax described as “the little death,“ and now I finally understood why. In the instant we clung together, sharing that shattering mutual orgasm, I died and was reborn a better man.

Donald Strachey, the man who’d known nothing but doubt, became a man of faith.  


 


End file.
